Uprooted Palestinians are at the heart of the conflict in the M.E Palestinians uprooted by force of arms. Yet faced immense difficulties have survived, kept alive their history and culture, passed keys of family homes in occupied Palestine from one generation to the next.

Thursday, 20 April 2017

Blessed Are the Peacemakers

[ Ed. note – The video above is of a townhall meeting conducted last week by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard in her home state of Hawaii. If you want to hear the congresswoman discuss the situation in Syria, fast forward the video to about 10 minutes in. Gabbard, who introduced the Stop Arming Terrorists act in Congress and who has drawn fire for challenging the media lies about Syria (most recently for questioning the narrative that the Assad government was behind the April 4 chemical weapons attack), is one of a number of a small number of prominent Americans who have been a voice of sanity in a world seemingly gone mad and moving closer and closer to war.

The article below,

“Blessed Are the Peacemakers,” holds up Gabbard, along with Professor Stephen Cohen, as models of modern-day peacemakers, and encourages Christians to follow their example. The irony of course: Gabbard is Hindu and Cohen is Jewish. The writer of the article, Yvonne Lorenzo, makes the point that there are “too few Americans who value the teachings of Christ on the primacy of peace—or at least value them enough to fight for them.” She is right. Something like 70 percent of Americans identify in some manner as “Christian.”

Blessed are the peacemakers,for they will be called children of God.

So said Christ in the Sermon on the Mount. If we truly want to be children of God, it is our duty to be peacemakers. And this means challenging the war mongers and speaking out as Cohen and Gabbard have done. We owe it to ourselves, our families, and to the planet we live on. ]

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. Matthew 5:9

I am writing these words before Good Friday (including Orthodox Christian) 2017. Tensions between nations have never been greater. Although there are tens of millions of people in America who profess the Christian faith, there appears to be very little in the way of public protests against military actions and incipient war.

Recently, conservative talk show host Michael Savage publicly criticized President Trump’s decision to attack Syria. His conversation with author and columnist Pat Buchannan is on this YouTube of his broadcast on April 11th. In his book, Trump’s War, Mr. Savage wrote in the chapter “Trump’s War against the War Machine” these wise observations:

Just after the election, I saw Mel Gibson’s movie Hacksaw Ridge. It’s about the U.S. Army medic Desmond T. Doss, who served at the vicious Battle of Okinawa in World War II but refused to kill anyone. He became the first man in American history to win the Medal of Honor without firing a single shot.

This was the perfect movie to see in the context of Donald Trump as an anti-war President. While I was watching this moving film, Trump was speaking to Russian president Vladimir Putin, even though Trump hadn’t been sworn in yet. The two men vowed to work together…

One of the reasons I worked so hard to get Trump elected is I believe he will be a man of peace. Put everything else aside. The most important thing in this world is not the economy. It’s peace.

[Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev] said American-Russian relations are absolutely ruined—ruined. He’s considered the most pro-Western member of the Russian leadership…and the politics in Russia today as we talk is if not the conviction the concern that America is preparing for war against Russia…my concern is that Russia will overreact…

(In forty years as a Russia expert) I’ve never been as worried as I am today about war with Russia.”

Yet far from most of the political leadership agreeing with Professor Cohen, they react with outrage against those who challenge their agenda; witness the attacks against Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard:

Sporting a sweet new “Resist” picture on Twitter, Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress and author of numerous embarrassing email exchanges with John Podesta, called on Hawaiians to oust their Representative, Tulsi Gabbard, for having the audacity to question whether Assad was responsible for the recent chemical weapons attacks in Syria…

Gabbard told CNN on Friday that she wants to achieve peace in Syria, “Why should we just blindly follow this escalation of a counterproductive regime-change war?”

“There’s responsibility that goes around,” Gabbard said. “Standing here pointing fingers does not accomplish peace for the Syrian people. It will not bring about an end to this war.”

Meanwhile, former DNC chair Howard Dean also decided to join in on ganging up on Gabbard, but he immediately got shut down by a follower who asked the obvious question of why engaging in dialogue was disqualifying for Gabbard but violating federal record retention laws and a Congressional subpoena was perfectly fine for Hillary.

It angers and saddens me that President Trump has taken the advice of war hawks and escalated our illegal regime change war to overthrow the Syrian government. This escalation is short-sighted and will lead to more dead civilians, more refugees, the strengthening of al-Qaeda and other terrorists, and a direct confrontation between the United States and Russia—which could lead to nuclear war.

This Administration has acted recklessly without care or consideration of the dire consequences of the United States attack on Syria without waiting for the collection of evidence from the scene of the chemical poisoning. If President Assad is indeed guilty of this horrible chemical attack on innocent civilians, I will be the first to call for his prosecution and execution by the International Criminal Court. However, because of our attack on Syria, this investigation may now not even be possible. And without such evidence, a successful prosecution will be much harder.

I am not a Russia expert like Professor Cohen yet I believe we ignore his warning at our peril. Right now, there is the potential for military conflict with North Korea, Syria, Russia and Iran. Yet for a few righteous voices crying out and being either scorned or ignored, there are sadly too few Americans who value the teachings of Christ on the primacy of peace—or at least value them enough to fight for them. How will God judge us for not taking a stand when now more than ever it matters so much and literally the world is at stake?